Installation

Input method engines

Currently the SCIM project has a wide range of input methods (some may need other libraries), covering more than 30 languages, including (Simplified/Traditional) Chinese, Japanese, Korean and many European languages. These are some of the examples (more can be found here):

Note for GNOME, Xfce, LXDE

If you are using GNOME, Xfce or LXDE and Qt applications do not pick up the export QT_IM_MODULE="scim" variable, you can use scim-bridge. To use scim-bridge instead, export the following:

export QT_IM_MODULE="scim-bridge"

Note for KDE3

For KDE3 you should export QT_IM_MODULE="xim" instead of scim and also install qtimm for Qt3.

Locale-related files

If your keyboard locale is not en_US.UTF-8 (or en_US.utf8), you have to modify the first line of ~/.scim/global (or /etc/scim/global to apply these settings to all users) according to the following example:

/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8,de_CH.UTF-8

and replace your de_CH.UTF-8 with your locale.

Note: Your locale has to be active (i.e. you have to uncomment it in /etc/locale-gen and then execute locale-gen as root) and has to be supported by SCIM (most *.UTF-8 locales are).

If you do not know which locales you have active at the moment, you can check it:

locale -a

(alternatively you can look at /etc/locale.gen).

Further troubleshooting with locales

If after you have install SCIM and the necessary input tables, SCIM still does not work, then you need to set the LC_CTYPE environmental variable in /etc/profile to the locale you plan to use. Simply create an entry for LC_CTYPE such as:

LC_CTYPE="zh_CN.UTF-8" # if you want to type simplified chinese

Finally you need to generate the locale using the locale-gen command.

Executing SCIM

SCIM can be run by just executing the scim command, although it is common to start SCIM as a daemon:

scim -d

You can put the above command in a script file and execute it automatically. Usual places are ~/.xinitrc (after environment variables and before DE/WM), /etc/profile (after environment variables) or ~/.config/openbox/autostart (after environment variables and possibly after some sleep command).

Note for GNOME

In case you use GNOME as your desktop environment, the command above does not seem to work as expected. Instead, you have to execute the following:

scim -f x11 -c simple -d

If you want SCIM to start automatically at startup, go to System > Preferences > Session and create a new command with the line above.

Note: If you use the line scim -f socket -c socket -d instead, the configuration of your SCIM will be unmodifiable.

Note for KDE

In case you use KDE as a desktop environment, the command above does not seem to work as expected. Instead, you have to execute the following:

Chrome/Chromium doesn't take input

This is a rather sloppy workaround. Also, even with this workaround, Korean users may find scim unusable with Chrome/Chromium, as the preedit string disappears when the space bar or other modifier keys are pressed at the end of a word.